By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
Team spectator sports—basketball, baseball, football, etc.—are shut down. There was an initial proposal to broadcast the competitions in empty stadiums and ball parks, but that idea died before it was implemented. —And for good reason. Can you image a basketball court with teams (dribble, dribble, dribble, basket) and no audience cheering?
Many do watch such games on television and it is somewhat entertaining. But the reaction of the crowd at the event provides the sound track of real excitement. Put yourself alone on the front row of bleachers of a game being played to an otherwise empty room and the silence overwhelms. It takes the “fun” away. You want to be one among hundreds of spectators caught up in the excitement of “face-to-face” games with others present.
There is an interesting phenomenon we are just learning from brain imaging studies. When a audience member is listening to a piece of music, their brain pattern “syncs” with the musician playing the music. They are mentally “together.” Consider being streetside as a marching band passes by. —Or sitting in the bleachers, joining the crowd cheering your team as they surge down the field to make a basket. That is the power of being together. It is no mystery that the bands that marched through our streets playing patriotic marches saw bystanders hug their loved ones goodbye and join in the parade that led to the military recruitment to join World War II.
There is also power in a group of students coming to class everyday to learn together under the leadership of a good teacher. That is also the reason that “personalized learning,” where each student in the classroom is isolated in front of a laptop to supposedly learn at their own speed, divorced from their classmates sitting around them, is lousy teaching. They no longer have the support of their classmates learning together. Everyone is “out of sync” and the “teacher” is a mere tech solver.
When students have a bad day and come to school unmotivated, the class around them helps them rise up and carry on. When a student is having a good day, their enthusiasm and success helps their classmates around them. My student teachers learned how this was a case of everyone “being in the moment” but it is also what is occurring with considerably more noise at a ball game. I am cautious when applying basic neurological research to applied teaching. Education schools have a long history of distorting such research to advance an education fad. But good teachers know when their class is “with them” and this recent research into brain synchrony appears to be solid science.
My student teachers also learned that “to teach is to learn twice” because they will have to take what they have learned in depth in college study and translate it into language that relates to a new generation of students’ experiences.
But to teach is to learn dozens of times over. In a mid-size to large school district, a biology teacher will likely teach freshman biology classes all day long. They will come to rely on some brief video examples to illustrate time-lapse plant growth or unique animal behavior. Since they will show this over again in each class throughout the day (and if they have good classroom discipline, why can’t they just turn on the video and leave the room?
My teachers-to-be knew this problem because this happened when they were students. That is not good, they will tell me. When I ask why, they reflect on how a teacher needs to stay in class with students. The teacher is in a learning journey with them, and stepping outside the class abandons them.
Before we had extensive media, we did have correspondence courses that let students work with a book and worksheets away from any class, sending in their lessons by mail. Tests were then taken under the supervision of a local school administrator. We knew back then that only one-out-of-ten correspondence students had the discipline and self-motivation to complete the course on their own. Nine-out-of-ten needed to learn together with the support of classmates and the teacher in the room.
For the vast majority of our K-12 and undergraduate students, learning alone doesn’t work.
. . .
John Richard Schrock has trained biology teachers for more than 30 years in Kansas. He also has lectured at 27 universities in 20 trips to China. He holds the distinction of “Faculty Emeritus” at Emporia State University.